


A Personal Request

by Anonymous



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 06:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11845884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Koltira comes back different, to a different world.





	A Personal Request

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morrezela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/gifts).



“They want a Scarlet for the third,” Thassarian says. 

He gets what he expects, not what he wants: the unbroken scrape of stone on steel. After a while, long enough that _before_ it would have been timed deliberately to twit him with its slowness, Koltira says, “Ah.” He runs the sharpening stone down his blade’s length again and tilts it, examining the angle on the edge instead of looking up.

Thassarian leans back into the doorframe and watches him work. It’s unfortunate, he thinks again -- for what must be at least the dozenth time -- that they hadn’t been able to find Byfrost in the few minutes they’d snatched in the bowels of the Undercity, though the new sword looks nearly like it after all the work Koltira’s put into it. He’s thought of tasking some Horde knight or other to go search for the original, as he assumes it must still be there; blades of that quality are too valuable to destroy in times of war, even if one’s grudges run as deep as Sylvanas’s. But between the legion and their new work, there hasn’t been anyone to spare for 'sentimental trivia', as Koltira would no doubt rightly call it if he managed to succeed. 

Somewhere deep inside his gut, barely audible, a lilting, snarky voice reminds him that he’d been saying that about the man himself for years on end. He’s grown so used to having conversations with the Koltira in his head that he’s already pointing out to it, deliberately mildly, that it had taken him _and the Deathlord_ to manage the extraction, when the Koltira in front of his face sets his sharpening stone down with a click and startles him out of the thought. The contrast leaves him feeling deeply uncomfortable in a way he can’t put a name to, a way that’s been tugging at him since Koltira opened faded blue eyes and said _Thassarian, is it really you?_ in waking life.

“Will he call me to go along?” Koltira asks. He glances up, finally, and Thassarian’s unease grows a tinge deeper. His eyes aren’t so dim as they were before they’d pushed a new runesword into his hands and let him slake his thirst on some easy prey, but there’s something still off there in the color, in the faded echo of the words.

It doesn’t help that Koltira’s hit on a question he hasn’t got the answers to; orders can be capricious at the best of times, with three people playing at leader. He shrugs. “Do you want to go?”

He almost mistakes Koltira’s scoffing un-laugh for the voice inside his head.

 

In a way, seeing Koltira up to his hips in a pile of crusader corpses is nostalgic, and he says as much when he catches up to him in a free moment, under cover of Nazgrim bellowing from across the courtyard. He’s rewarded with a disdainful sneer which is equally _right_ , and when the battle surges around them again, pulling them apart with flashes of light and fire, he chops his way back to the Deathlord feeling more satisfied than he should, given the fight the crusaders are putting up.  
The feeling lingers as Whitemane claws her way back to the unliving, enough that when he offers her atonement it’s less of a joke than it should be, and perhaps that’s why she believes him; why the death gate comes so easily to her hands in place of the Light. Perhaps that’s why, instead of following them all back for his new orders, he wanders back out to the courtyard where he’d last seen Koltira, lagging behind the last push into the chapel.

He’s still there, sorting through the last few remaining ghouls and putting down the damaged ones. “It went well,” he says, when Thassarian’s near enough. It’s the second time he’s spoken first, since Andorhal.

“It did,” Thassarian agrees, kicking a bit of skull out of the way and coming to stand at Koltira’s side. The ghoul he’s examining is a bit worse for the wear, one of its legs half burnt off, and Thassarian’s not surprised when Koltira draws the runic power from it and drops it to the ground. “They’ve gone back to Acherus. I imagine Mograine will have someone take it from there; no rest for the wicked, and the Deathlord's busy enough.”

Koltira keeps the power wrapped around his fingers, looking at his hands instead of the last ghoul for a long moment, then drains it, too, without the slightest glance at its mostly-functional body. “I thought I was finally going mad,” he says, unprompted. “When I heard him again.”

It’s a side effect of talking to himself too much as much as of their _unhealthy_ attachment, no doubt, but it takes Thassarian entirely by surprise. He’d been so used to telling ‘Koltira’ everything and asking his unhelpful advice that it had never really sunk in that the genuine article had missed it all, chained up down there, with no one apparently deigning to keep him in the loop. An interesting variant of torture, that. There’s no need, of course, to ask _who_ or _which him_. Not for them. “It was Fordragon, you know,” he says instead. “The paladin from Stormwind. They wanted someone to control the scourge, after they killed Arthas in the Citadel.”

Koltira doesn’t say anything to that, and eventually duty pulls Thassarian away.

 

It’s duty that draws them back together -- or orders, depending on what you want to call it. Thassarian knows where he stands on that, and there was a time when he knew where Koltira did -- and one where he _thought_ he knew where Koltira did -- but he’s finally pinned down that damned elusive feeling, and it’s doubt. He doesn’t know what happened to Koltira, because Koltira still isn’t talking about it: not to him, not to the Deathlord, not to anyone. Thassarian is perhaps a little perversely happy about the totality of his silence.

 

When they shove their way through, Koltira looks down at the mess of putrid flesh that covers the ground in front of them with pure annoyance. “How many times will we be sent back to this damn place?” he complains. He sounds like himself again instantly, though he’d been brooding and silent the whole journey over.

“Think of it as a new experience.” It’s less and less now that Thassarian has to remind himself to speak aloud.

Koltira raises a mess of ghouls only to set them to cleaning slime from the ground, scratching at mossy stones. “There’s not a graveyard left that’s a new experience,” he says, curling his lip, and Thassarian can’t help but laugh at the normality and at his indefatigable fussiness.

With a stableful of ghouls helping (more or less), it doesn’t take long to unearth the saddle they’d been sent for. Koltira jerks it free of the earth, brushing mud and pebbles from the fel leather and dislodging a mostly-skeletal foot from the stirrup. Thassarian refrains from making a joke about the footless horseman in favor of watching Koltira’s fingers, splayed out pale across the dark hide.

 

They’re barely back long enough to take off their armor and clean the slime and mud from it before they’re in the field again -- though not back to the Monastery again, at least. Still, the Shadowlands aren’t the most pleasant vacation destination, and Thassarian didn’t much care for Shek’zeer in life. Koltira doesn’t ask, but Thassarian finds himself explaining what he missed in their suddenly- bigger world, in bits and shreds mostly gathered from half-conversations that Koltira wasn’t actually there for. (He doesn’t explain that part.)

Koltira says less now than he did then, but before they cross back over he pauses, then touches Thassarian once, like he used to, just at his neck, just where threat becomes trust. “I knew,” he says. He doesn’t finish it. He doesn’t have to.


End file.
